Does anyone commute in from Tigard or Beaverton to downtown, or to the Pearl? Any advice on a route would be appreciated.

Might sound a bit scary, but Hwy 217, and Hwy 26 are both legal.

Head north on Hwy 217 towards Hwy 26, take the exit just before Ridgewood park. Take a Left on SW Wilshire St (East), go two blocks then left onto SW Knollcrest Dr.. At the end of Knollcrest is the beginning of the Hwy 26 bike trail. Follow the trail up to SW Pointer Rd. Left on SW Camelot, turn at the bike trail. Follow the trail up to SW Skyline Blvd. Cross Skyline, follow the trail down to SW Canyon Ct..

Now you have an option, you can at SW Zoo Rd, go up (left) to the Zoo, and bomb down that way

Or (my preference)

Go Down (right) to the Hwy 26 Onramp, and take the Hellway Zoobomb down to Goose Hollow. Follow Hwy 26 down to the SW Jefferson Street exit, thru the tunnel, and there you are.

Does anyone commute in from Tigard or Beaverton to downtown, or to the Pearl? Any advice on a route would be appreciated.

Coming back west from Portland - there is always the MAX to get you over the hills, for those days you just dont want to do it.

That said, if you head west on Jefferson, pass the Goose Hollow MAX station, and it looks like you are getting on the freeway, just where the road bends to the left, there is a path on your right.

Switchback your way up (turn left onto Madison), it takes you to Lewis and Clark Circle. Go straight ahead, and the road will take you up through Washington Park, past the Rose Garden, then up the evil little stretch just west of the Rose Garden (low gears? you'll want them here). Eventually you'll get to the Zoo. Then do K'Tesh's suggested route in reverse, except I personally would not ride on Hwy 26 or Hwy 217. There are adequate surface streets in the area. Once you have a general location, I would be happy to tell you which ones would work for you.

Scholls Ferry North to Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy. Right on B-H and on up to Capitol Hwy., over the hill past Wilson High School, down about a half-mile, then left on Terwilliger. Terwilliger ends up at Sam Jackson; turn right and the road curves around and becomes 6th.

I have heard others express dislike for Beaverton-Hillsdale hwy, but I find it not bad at all, once you cross the line into Multnomah county, which is where the bike lane starts. There is a tricky spot right where B-H turns into Capitol Hwy: there is a turn-off for Bertha blvd. where cars are supposed to (according to the signage) "Yield to Bikes", but they *never* do.

This route has the least elevation gain, and Terwilliger is a beautiful stretch of road.

Coming back west from Portland - there is always the MAX to get you over the hills, for those days you just dont want to do it.

<snip>

Multimoding is really your best bet here on the west side, if you're trying to get to work on a regular basis over the hill. There are too many days where I'm just too darned tired to work on climbing the hill (and B-H is too far to the south from where I live to be very practical).

Another obscure option available to you is to use Canyon Road, veering off at Canyon Drive. At the top of Canyon Drive you can dodge onto SW Raab Road (no, the maps don't show it, but its there!), and then pick your poison (by the zoo and listen to lions roar for breakfast, down the Hellway, or even by way of Council Crest).

The driver of a motor vehicle may only pass a person operating a bicycle by driving to the left of the bicycle at a safe distance and returning to the lane of travel once the motor vehicle is safely clear of the overtaken bicycle. For the purposes of this paragraph, a “safe distance” means a distance that is sufficient to prevent contact with the person operating the bicycle if the person were to fall into the driver’s lane of traffic....

Does anyone commute in from Tigard or Beaverton to downtown, or to the Pearl? Any advice on a route would be appreciated.

I commute from DT to Beaverton. Going to Beaverton I take Jefferson through the Zoo then get on Hwy. 26 at the Skyline/Silvan exit. If I'm running late, I'll take Jefferson straight to Hwy. 26. The shoulder is kind of narrow (and bumpy), but most of the traffic in the slow lane is slow-moving semi-trucks, so it's not too bad. There's also the multi-use path that parallels 26, but when the weather's nice it tends to be crowded with pedestrians and dogs on extendable leashes. I've had one close call with a light-less cyclist descending west on the path when I was going east; I feel safer on Hwy. 26, the shoulder's nice and wide. Depending on my mood, I'll get off 26 at the 69a exit (just before the 217 interchange) and take neighborhood back roads or else take 217 to the Canyon Rd. exit if I'm in a hurry. There's 3 (maybe 4) onramps that you have to negotiate, but the traffic moves in waves, so you can usually just wait in the merge median for a gap in traffic.

Going east, I get on 26 via Parkway right at the 217 interchange. I once rode on 217 from Walker to 26; the shoulder is like 1.2 feet wide. I had to ride in the traffic lane (a couple of motorists weren't too happy about that!). I wouldn't take 217 from Tigard, the shoulder varies in width and there's lots of exit/onramps to negotiate. I would just take arterials into Beaverton (Hall Blvd., Murray, etc.). Once on 26, I usually get off at Silvan/Skyline and cut over onto Canyon Ct. via the last segment of the multi-use path and take that to the zoo. It tends to be easier than negotiating past that exit ramp and getting off at the zoo exit. The shoulder also gets kind of choppy past Skyline, so be careful if you ride 26 past there. I've taken 26 all the way to the PGE exit (73 I believe, the last exit you have to take before the Vista Ridge tunnels) which puts you onto Jefferson. It's a nice quick way to bypass the zoo if you don't have the time or energy to climb through the arboretum. It's also kind of fun riding through that tunnel, the shoulder continues all the way through it and only drops after Jefferson starts to descend (where you can comfortably take the lane).

You could also take Pac Hwy. to Barbur into downtown, that's a pretty straight shot. Be careful though, both Pac Hwy. and Barbur have some poorly designed/maintained bike lanes that abruptly end in a couple spots without warning. I usually only ride PAC Hwy. during rush hour if I absolutely have to.

The zoo is really fun to ride through, I highly recommend it to anyone commuting into DT from the west side. If you think freeway riding is dangerous the accident statistics show otherwise; freeways are the safest roads out there because there's no turning or crossing traffic. Hopefully ODOT won't try and ban bicycles from state highway shoulders again (I think they proposed that a couple of years ago), I think they're fun to ride on and really convenient if you're in a hurry.

Depending on where you are in Tigard, you can always shoot up 99w (turns into Barbur) and then follow Terwilliger all the way to downtown. I'm pretty sure that's how it goes, but then again, I'm not usually ride leader in charge of where we're going when we go out riding.

I commute four days a week from 39th & NE Killingsworth to Downtown Beaverton. There are many fun ways to go in nice weather like up SW Montgomery, but a good daily all weather commute is up Barbur to Bertha. Bertha is a "notch" in the hill and much easier than up Twilliger or Barbur up Capital. There is also a way to get off of Barbur at Scholls Ferry where the bike ends. Turn onto Dogwood which becomes Willowmere, to Nicol to Jamieson. Follow map to bike path to 5th to Dwtn Beaverton.